Question

explain and support which you feel is better to reduce Medical errors: increased reimbursement for successful medicine or the current stick method where providers are liable for their negligence

Answer 1

The current stick method where providers are liable for their negligence is the best method to reduce Medical errors.

Health Care Providers should be held accountable for their services that are being carried out towards the patients. When a patient is brought to the hospital, the hospital should make all possible attempts to do good to the patient. The patient's complaint / problem should be addressed right away when admitted to the Emergency Units. The Emergency Units should be managed by highly educated doctors and there should be no room for flaws as one wrong move could even take the patients life. Proper Design systems should be put into place at the emergency units.

There should be double checks for checking the quality of medical treatment being carried out. It is ascertained that 98% of mistakes can be rectified when double checks are done. Proper constraints and forcing functions should be monitored in hospitals. Constraints like "Are you sure?", "Was it done correctly?", "Is my client happy?" should be answered by the health care providers from time to time so that they are fully responsible for their actions towards the patient. Also forcing functions which are physical constraint in which the actions are constrained so that failure at one stage prevents the next step from happening is a good way to prevent errors.

In the book, Error Reduction in Health Care: A Systems Approach to Improving Patient Safety, author and editor Patrice Spath spells out 13 principles that hospitals can apply to reduce medical error using a systems approach.

Those 13 principles are:

1. Simplify the process; reduce hand-offs
2. Standardize
3. Reduce reliance on memory
4. Improve information access
5. Use constraints and forcing functions
6. Design for errors
7. Adjust work schedules
8. Adjust the environment
9. Improve communication
10. Decrease reliance on vigilance
11. Provide adequate training
12. Choose the right staff for the job
13. Engage patients and family members

By following these principles there would not be any errors in hospitals.

Also there should be a Review Panel that takes action for any errors that are committed. A patient's feedback during treatment should be taken from time to time during his/her stay at the hospital. When treatment is being reviewed the nurse, doctor or ward supervisors would be watchful and be responsible for their actions.

Thus, stringent measures must be put into place so that patient would be comfortable at the hospital and also to avoid unnecessary patient deaths due to negligence.